1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a magnetic tape recording/reproducing apparatus reproducing video signals or audio for recording and/or signals.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Nowadays most families own video tape recorders (hereinafter abbreviated as VTR) for recording and/or reproducing video-and audio signals.
As home-use VTRS, the VHS system, 8 mm system and the like are known, each of which allows video and audio signals having a length of about two to eight hours to be recorded on a cassette housing a magnetic tape therein.
In this case, however, the home-use-VTRs have many problems on a practical basis.
First, when a program is to be recorded, such a cassette that has a necessary blank region to record the program therein or that has an erasable program which can be recorded over must be selectively found from a plurality of cassettes. If a time period needed for recording the program on one cassette is long, the number of useable cassettes is decreased. In this case, however, in order to find a recordable space on a cassette, operations such as rewinding, fast forwarding and the like have to be repeated. These operations are extremely complicated and in some cases, may not be made timely before starting the program, resulting in problem in that the program cannot be recorded from the beginning.
Second, when reproducing a desired program which has been already recorded, a cassette having the desired program must be found from a plurality of cassettes. Furthermore, operations such as rewinding, fast forwarding and the like have to be repeated in order to find the desired program on the cassette. These operations are also extremely complicated.
In addition, many home-use VTRs having a digital recording system have been manufactured on a trial basis. One of the many home-use VTRs has been proposed in a report, Hiroo Okamoto, et. al, "A consumer digital VCR for advanced television". IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, Vol. 93, No. 3, pp. 199-204 (August, 1993). However, with the many home-use VTRs having a digital recording system and manufactured on a trial basis, the above-mentioned problems cannot be solved.
In addition, regardless of whether an analog recording system or a digital recording system is used, conventional VTRs record inputted video and audio Signals sequentially on a real-time basis, and thus, it is impossible to solve the above-mentioned problems.